Here in Your Arms
by SporksN'Knives
Summary: A 3-part collection of song-inspired blurbs. Apart, Edward and Winry come to the realization that there's something more that both of them want. They write letters with the intention of exchanging them...but nerves could keep them apart.
1. Far Away

**It recently came to my attention that both chapters of this story were the same chapter. Thanks for pointing this out, becauseI forgot to check for once. XD This has been fixed. **

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For once in her young life, Winry Rockbell found herself unable to concentrate on the automail at hand. Try as she may, she would be working intently one moment and ten seconds later her thoughts would drift elsewhere. The first time she spaced out, she managed to poke herself in the stomach with a straying wire. The second time she turned to get something off of the table behind her and tripped over a power cord stretched across the floor. The third time Aunt Pinako came in and told her she had another order. After practically leaving the ground after Pinako startled her so, Winry gave up on the automail for the night and went up to her bedroom.

As she changed from her grease-stained overalls and into her clean cotton pajamas, Winry found herself drifting off into her headspace again. What she saw herself thinking about caused her to jolt back into reality.

"I can't be thinking about him!" she told herself in disbelief, removing the elastic band keeping her flowing blond hair at bay. "Ed's clear out in Central. He's fine. _He's_ a state alchemist and _he_ can fend for himself."

"But still…he's been pretty far away for so long," Winry thought. "I wonder if he's managed to screw up his automail yet…" she pondered, running her hands through her hair and crawling beneath her cool bedsheets. "I kind of hope he breaks it soon. I can't believe I'd want something like that, but it always seems that he only comes home when he needs replacements." She felt a sad smile surfacing on her face. "Not that this is home to him or anything."

She rested her head on the feather pillow, watching the moonlight dance in beams across the room.

"He's made so many mistakes…he's lost so much... I wonder if this time he'll find whatever it is he's looking for. Now that I think about it, he's never really told me about this thing he and Al are risking their lives over..."

Winry tossed and turned for a few minutes before finally heaving a sigh and turning onto her stomach. "Why can't I stop thinking about him?" she yelled into her pillow. "He's been gone too long! If he cared for me the way I care for him, he wouldn't go for this long without at least sending a letter or something! It's too late for him to feel like that…isn't it?" She sat up and walked across her room and sat down in the windowseat, staring across the rolling Risembool countryside toward Central. She didn't stop herself from thinking what she thought next.

"I'm waiting for you, Ed. Do you ever think about me? Do you even remember I exist sometimes?"

At her final thought, Winry felt unwanted tears wobbling on her lower lids. She angrily wiped them away and continued staring out over the horizon, which was streaked with the slightest strips of pink, yellow, and orange. She couldn't stop the first tear from falling as she subconsciously summoned any image at all of Ed to appear in her mind. The only thing she saw was the night he and Al had attempted to bring their mother back to life. Al fallen in the doorway, Ed covered in his own blood, two of the four precious limbs gone. She remembered his cries after they had his bleeding mostly sloweed and him on a bed hooked up to a couple of machines. Winry lost it and drew her knees up to her chest, hiding her face in her arms which she hugged around her legs.

"I had so many chances to tell him how I felt and I blew every damn one…" Winry wept openly, her sobs muffled by her arms. "Ed knows I love him! He knows I loved him all along! He knows it!" she sucked in breath enough to continue. "I had so many breaths to spend saying _three_ words and I didn't use a single damn one of them! Now I might not have the chance." Wiry forced herself to stop crying. "Just for the record," she whispered as best she could, her lungs still slightly spastic from her crying. "If I only had one breath left, I'd use it and tell Ed I love him." She groaned at herself. "Dear God, Winry. What the hell are you saying…"

Her azure eyes were filled with a sudden determination, but didn't hold it. After a few seconds her face fell again and her eyes lowered to the wood of the windowseat. One final tear glittered as it plummeted like a liquid diamond to the cedar. "I miss you," she whispered. "You've been too far away for far too long." She leaned back against the wall behind her and watched the final light fade into the darkness taking over the sky. She managed to close her eyes and keep them closed. A few more minutes and she was finally able to drift off into her slumber.

"Winry!" Aunt Pinako called, opening the door to Winry's room. "Winry! We have guests."

Winry yawned and sat up straight, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. "Alright, alright, I'm coming down." She opened her eyes and looked around. Sunlight streamed through the window and illuminated every corner of her room. She tiredly dragged herself out of bed and changed her shirt, leaving her pajama bottoms on. It was too early in the morning for people to expect her to be coherent enough to completely change clothes. She opened the door after putting on her slippers and trotted-half-tripped down the stairs.

She couldn't believe who she saw standing in the living room. The height was enough to give him away. Too bad she didn't have a wrench to chuck at him. Instead Winry ran straight for him and threw her arms around his vertically-challenged frame.

"You're back!" she whispered, her head locked against the side of his. Ed laughed. "No wrench this time?" he asked humorously, hugging her back. Winry's eyes opened wide when she felt Ed's arms tightening around her. She pulled away from him and took a moment to glance at his golden eyes. She then focused her attention on his nose. She normally looked at his nose so that she wouldn't be drawn in by those persuasive eyes of his. "So how long are you planning on being here?"

Ed smiled, though there was sadness in that rare, genuine smile of his. "We're here to stay, Winry. We know that what we were looking for exists, but we can't find it because a real one isn't around. We could have created one, but then I'm pretty sure I couldn't live with myself."

'He's staying. Here. In Risembool. This can't be happening."

A faraway voice echoed in her head. "Winry…Winry…"

She looked behind her where the stairs should have been. She blinked once, but when she opened her eyes after closing them for that one second, she saw the wall opposite her in the windowseat.

"Wait…what?" she murmured, sitting up abruptly, consequently falling off of the bench because she had been half-way off of it as it was. The ceiling came to a standstill above her as she lay on her back on the floor, her legs till propped up on the windowseat.

"Ow…" she whispered, hauling herself up to stand. She lost her balance momentarily, but she rested her hand on the wall beside her as her head caught up with the rest of her.

"That couldn't have been a dream," she thought. "It was too real!"

Aunt Pinako knocked twice on Winry's door and opened it a crack. "Oh, Winry, you're up!" she said. The old woman's expression softened as she walked toward the girl. "I heard you crying last night," she said, concern in her voice. Winry let her head drop, her chin coming into the slightest contact with her chest. "I was hoping you hadn't."

"What was it?" she asked as Winry sat down on her bed, tucking her knees under her chin. "You can't keep everything to yourself, Winry."

Winry sighed. She opened her mouth to speak, but her lips wouldn't form the words, nor would her lungs supply the breath necessary to speak. She closed her mouth and swallowed. A moment later she found herself able to speak. Even then, it was labored and Winry was struggling to articulate.

"I….I was thinking about Ed," she murmured, picking at a stray thread in the blanket covering her bed. Aunt Pinako smiled sadly.

"You miss him, don't you?"

"More than you know. I feel like I can't breathe when I realize that I might never see him again.

"You know Ed. He'll break his automail punching someone's lights out and he'll be back in a heartbeat."

Winry found it in herself to smile a bit. "I just wish he'd come back for something other than repairs."

"What do you mean?"

The words caught in her throat again. "...I love him."

There was a moment of stabbing silence for a moment. Pinako finally said something. "You do?"

Winry looked at her aunt and nodded vigorously. "I'm sure of it. I once wrote that I'd take on the devil himself if it was only to hold Ed's hand…" she murmured.

Pinako smiled, this time no sadness in her expression. "I knew you loved him, Winry. Anyone with any intelligence at all could see that. Even Ed knows it."

Winry looked down. "I don't think my love for him is requited, though." She looked back at Pinako. "I feel stupid for half the things I wrote in my journal…"

Pinako shook her head. "It isn't stupid. Not if you meant it, Winry."

"Is there a way I can get all of this out?" Winry asked.

"Write a letter. Don't hold anything back and just keep it going. Then when the time comes and Ed comes back, slip it into his coat pocket or something when he isn't looking. By the time he finds it he'll be too far away to come back and talk to you about it. If that doesn't bring him around I don't know what will."

Winry smiled. "I'll have to do that." Pinako squeezed Winry's hand and left the room, closing the door behind her. Winry heard it click shut and listened to two words resonating in her head like gunshots. 'Far away.'

"I have to get that letter written before I do anything else," she told herself, scrambling for the nightstand by her bed. She pulled a journal out of the drawer along with a pen and started writing down everything. Her only doubt was in herself. Would she be brave enough to actually slip it to him when he came back?

Winry pushed these thoughts from her mind as every feeling she harbored in her heart began pouring from the pen in swooping penstrokes. She would give it to him. Surely nothing absolutely terrible would happen. Hadn't she secretly loved him for long enough?

She began with two words she'd never put together before.

_Dear Ed..._


	2. Here Without You

**I finally remembered to dig up my old dA account to get this. xD /fail/**

**Anyway, enjoy~! This segment of my little trilogy is based on Here Without You by Three Doors Down.**

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Another day in the search for the philosopher's stone, another night spent on a hard military couch. Edward and Alphonse had run across a military outpost in one of the southern regions and had been 'taken in'. That was a nicer way of saying they had been arrested. Though they hadn't had to stay in a cell, the boys had been detained in one of the lesser offices until they could verify his identity as a state alchemist. Ed couldn't show them his pocket watch because he had left it with Colonel Mustang back in Central because it had broken.

Here he was now, curled up on a couch, his back to the rest of the room and his nose ever so slightly touching the dusty material of the couch back. He had lain in this same position for hours, his calculating and restless mind denying his exhausted body to sleep. To pass the time, he had chewed over everything and everything that came to mind until there was nothing else to contemplate about the subject. The only thing that he couldn't sort his way to the bottom of was Winry.

It had been over two years since the last time he had last gone home or even had contact with anyone back in Risenbul. He hadn't really thought about it, but deep down he kind of missed having wrenches hitting him in the head whenever Winry was mad at him. She was the only one who tormented him the way she did and spoke to him like he wasn't above her. Maybe that was why he found himself attracted to her.

Ed had grown much more mature in the time he had spent as one of the military's alchemist dogs. He had already been through hell and back again and had lost everything he held dear to him except for his younger brother, Alphonse. His mother had along ago died from a disease that had plagued her for years, and he had lost his left leg when he tried to bring her back from the dead, a forbidden type of transmutation. Al lost his body as a whole and Ed had sacrificed his arm and managed to bind his brother's soul to one of the suits of armor in the cellar of their home. Since that night, he had seen some things so horrible that a weathered soldier couldn't help but shudder at the sight. He had told a million lies to save his life and had grown to be occasionally quite cold. Because of the life he had been more or less forced to live, he couldn't look at anything the same way he had a few short years ago.

Ed was suddenly aware of how far away from anyone familiar he was. The one person accentuated in the picture he automatically associated with this thought was Winry. He was a thousand miles away from her at the very least. As the thought of her began to override the rest of his thought processed, Ed turned onto his back to distract himself. He tried to rationalize and say the only reason he thought of her was because her face was closest associated with his definition of home.

'How can I lay here thinking about Winry when there are so many other things I should be worrying about?' he wondered, turning his back to the rest of the room. 'She's fine back in Risenbul. She's probably thinking about all the ways she's gonna update my automail the next time I go back there.' A single, dark thought flitted across his mind. 'If I ever go back.'

A few minutes, fatigue took its toll and Ed drifted into sleep. At first, his rest was fitful, but when Winry's face surfaced again in his mind, he slept peacefully, the miles separating him from her dissipating the more he dreamt of her. True, he was alone in a military post, under arrest with no one but his brother, the silent suit of armor leaned against the wall on the other end of the room, but somehow it seemed like Winry was still with them.

Three days later Ed and Al had been released and found themselves on a train back to Central. He knew what he was in for once seated in Mustang's office again – at least two hours of the same lecture on his conduct and other various things during his constant travels searching for the fabled philosopher's stone.

Despite the knowledge of the inevitable back in Central, Ed sat lay on his seat with crumpled up pieces of paper littering the area around him. Al seemed to be staring out the window, but his eyes kept flitting over to his brother. He was down to the last piece of paper and hadn't managed to write more than three sentences. Occasionally there was a soft "Damnit!" before he grabbed the paper in the center and pulled it up into his fist, but for the most part he was silent. Al knew what Edward was up to, but chose not to say anything. He was writing a letter to Winry, and he had tormented him over it before, but something was different about the letter Ed was struggling with. He was finally coming to terms with his feelings for Winry and it was his job to write her or let her know how he felt. Al had known for years that Winry loved Ed, and while normally he wouldn't have hesitated to get involved and get them together, he knew he would mess something up.

He was down to the last sheet of paper and had yet to write more than half a paragraph. Ed gripped the pen so hard his knuckles turned white. He had no idea what to say! A simple update on how they were and how things were in Central was hardly a letter. It seemed too formal to talk about his career and he hadn't told her about the philosopher's stone before. Wait, he couldn't tell her about that. If he did that she'd be freaking out indefinitely because she would have a bout with that overactive imagination of hers. He didn't want to make her worry, but at the same time didn't want her to just write him off. Part of him knew she wouldn't do that, but another part feared that she would.

'Damnit! You'd think writing a letter would be easy!' Ed sat up and stretched, trying as hard as he could to seem nonchalant since Al was sitting a few feet away.

"How's the letter coming, brother?" Al asked, turning his head to glance at Ed, who crossed his arms across his chest as if nothing was wrong.

"It's going alright," he said, avoiding eye contact with his brother by looking out the window at the countryside. Al was silent for a moment, and Ed gave in. Why he tried keeping up the charade like this was beyond him. Al always knew when Ed was lying about something as trivial as a letter to Winry.

"Alright, I can't think of a single damn thing to tell her," he sighed, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. "Can't tell her what we've been up to because she'll make a gatling gun so she can hit me in the head with twice as many wrenches because I made her worry so much. Talking about our lives since going to Central would seem pretty middle-of-the-road and I obviously can't tell her how I feel about her! I don't even know how she feels about me."

Al looked down at the floor of the train. "Yes you do, brother. You just don't want to admit it yourself."

Ed's golden eyes grew harsh and defensive as he looked up at his younger brother. "What's that supposed to mean?" he practically hissed.

Al put up his hands. "I'm just saying, you know as well as anyone that deep down Winry really loves you and cares for you. Maybe you just don't want to accept it because it scares you that maybe you've found who you're supposed to be with."

A hint of a smile tugged at the corners of Ed's mouth. "Where'd you get so insightful?" he asked, slowly twirling the pen around with one hand. His automail made the tiniest clinking sound against the pen's casing. "So what do you suggest?" he asked a moment later.

Al shrugged. "Just what's on your heart, brother. You don't have to mail it to her, you know. Just write it all down and if you want you can get it to her. It seems pretty cliché, but it's what I've heard works."

"What, did someone give you the same advice?" Ed snickered, lying back down on the train seat. Al started stuttering, and Ed swore that if his brother had a physical body he would be sweating profusely and the expression on his face would be one of the most priceless in the world. "N-NO! Of course n-not!"

Ed shook his head and turned his attention back to the paper. It was a shame he only had one sheet of paper. 'I can write small. After all, I can copy it down later. I know from just looking at the colonel's desk that there's plenty of extra paper in Central.'

Right off the bat he deviated from his usual greeting of a mere "Winry,". He started off with two words he had never put together.

'Dear Winry…'


End file.
